


Healing

by scarletseeker113



Series: The road onwards [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-13
Updated: 2012-08-01
Packaged: 2017-11-09 21:46:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/458798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarletseeker113/pseuds/scarletseeker113
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Okay, after I posted the last two works on this series I was going to be done, but it just kept nagging at me. How were Sherlock and John ever going to be okay again? And this scene was kind of banging against the inside of my skull, so I just wrote it out. I don't know how many chapters this piece will have or how it's even going to continue right now, so i'm just going to play it by ear for a while now.</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, after I posted the last two works on this series I was going to be done, but it just kept nagging at me. How were Sherlock and John ever going to be okay again? And this scene was kind of banging against the inside of my skull, so I just wrote it out. I don't know how many chapters this piece will have or how it's even going to continue right now, so i'm just going to play it by ear for a while now.

John thinks that, given the events of the past couple of months, that he’s handled everything pretty well.

He’s adjusting to Sherlock being back quite well, and it feels just like before. Well, until he remembers. Then it hits him like a train at full speed right in the chest.

He misses Mary so much it physically hurts. Sherlock has to trick him into eating food on bad days, which is a strange reversal of roles.

He knows that things never would have worked out with Mary if Sherlock had still been around, and he knows that things with Sherlock wouldn’t be working as well as they were now if Mary were still alive. So, in the end, it’s perfect timing, but still, the pain  doesn’t go away.

If he was being honest with himself, and he only is at four in the morning when he can’t sleep and Sherlock is muttering softly downstairs, he’s glad Sherlock came back rather than Mary. John is sure that this makes him a terrible person, but he can’t help it.

If he lived in a twisted world where he was allowed to choose which loved ones came back from the dead, he would have chosen Sherlock. The thought makes him feel vaguely like a cheating husband.

On one of these nights, after being brutally honest with himself and hating himself for it, John makes his way downstairs. He is forced to pause a few times because of the injury in his side.The knife wound was healing, but it wasn’t yet healed.

Sherlock is pacing in his blue dressing gown, it flaps behind him like a cape.

“Bored bored bored bored Bored _bored Bored BORED!_ ” he is saying, he word rising to a crescendo and then becoming soft again, and then it rises once more before dropping to a whisper and on and on and on and on and on.

John ignores him, because it’s the easiest thing to do right now, while he’s still furious with himself from his own honesty.

Sherlock flops into his angular functional chair and pulls his dressing gown around his legs.

“I need a case,” he announces.

John sighs and pulls bread out from the cupboard. “I need a vacation from my life,” he mutters. He extracts two pieces of bread from the bag and turns around to search for the toaster. He can’t find it, it’s not in it usual place and it’s not on any of the counters.

“Sherlock?” he asks as his friend comes and stand in the doorway. “Where is the toaster?” 

The man points wordlessly to the table.

A jumble of part that John had taken for an Experiment He Didn’t Want to Know About is heaped on the wood. 

On closer inspection, John finds that it is, in fact, the toaster in pieces. 

He takes a deep breath and counts to twenty. His fists are clenched so tightly that his nails are digging into his palms.

He can’t decide if he wants to throw something or cry. Maybe both.

Sherlock is watching him with his head tilted to one side, and his calculating glare is eventually what breaks him.

He throws the bread in his hand at the wall. It hits with an understated  _thunk_ and falls to the ground anticlimactically.

If he wasn’t so angry he would have laughed at the absurdity of it.

“That is completely unsatisfying, John,” Sherlock says. “Try something that breaks.”

John glares at him. The detective looks back innocently.

John stalks over to the cupboard and pulls out a glass cup. He looks over at Sherlock with his eyebrows raised as if asking for permission.

Sherlock nods with authority.

John hurls it at the wall and it shatters, the shards landing on the ground with a sound like delicate music. He winces, placing a hand at his side where the cut is. Sherlock’s eyes follow the movement, not missing a thing.

“Isn’t that better?” Sherlock asks. “Now, go get your gun, _that_ is much more satisfying.”

John scowls at him.

“What?” Sherlock frowns. “Ah, you’re angry with me specifically. On second thought, don’t get your gun.”

John resists the urge to crack a smile, and leans against the counter wearily. He presses a hand against his face so that he can’t see.

His brain is already urging him to get a broom and sweep up the mess, but he doesn’t want to. He wants to leave it there, as a testament to his anger, or more specifically, his lack of it.

“The toaster was a wedding gift from Mary’s parents,” John finally says.

Sherlock looks as if he doesn’t know if he should look disgusted by the sentiment or apologetic for pulling it to pieces. He settles for looking vaguely horrified.

“And I’m not even angry that you destroyed it,” John laughs weakly. “I’m just happy to have experiments in the kitchen again.”

Sherlock looks confused by this, then a corner of his mouth twitches upwards in a satisfied smile.

“I’m going out,” John says, eventually, and leaves the room.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which John visits some graves.

John walks out and starts to walk down the street. He knows, from a doctor’s perspective, that he shouldn’t walk very much, unless he wants to aggravate his wound. But he honestly doesn’t care very much.

Even so, when a cab drives by, he flags it down, thinking that he doesn’t want to have to go back to the hospital, for Sherlock’s sake if nothing else.

“Where to?” the cabby asks, and John weighs the odds that this cabby is actually a serial killer. The odds are slims, but still, after that first case five years ago, John finds himself wondering every time he settles in the backseat of a cab.

“Springville Cemetery,” he says quietly.

The cab driver nods, and the taxi starts to move. John stares out the window as the buildings pass by.

The sky is grey, as it is too often in London. The grey sky was something he had missed the most while he was in Afghanistan. He had gotten used to it a couple years back, sometime in the time period after Sherlock’s fake death and before he had met Mary he had lost his appreciation of the grey clouds. 

The cab pulls up next to the cemetery that John knows so well. He pays the cab driver and climbs out.

He remembers the funeral almost too well, it was excruciating. It was easily the worst moment of his life, followed second by the moment when he heard Mary’s diagnosis. 

All he could remember thinking on both occasions was, _No. Please, God no._ And in both instances he didn’t let himself cry until he was alone, and then great big heaving sobs racked his body so that he couldn’t stand up straight. 

He arrives at the grave. _Mary Watson_ is inscribed on the granite there and he stands at the feet of the grass, and he stares at it.

He used to talk to her when he came, the way he used to talk to Sherlock. He stopped one his best friend had come back, it seemed pointless, once he’d spent so much time talking to the detective and he wasn’t even there.

So now he just stands and stares at the headstone, at the dates that so crudely show her lifespan. John has never liked those, it shouldn’t be the dates that they lived. The dash in the middle, that is what matters. 

The dash in the middle is all the loves and the losses, the terrible jobs and the great friends, it’s drunk nights and missed meetings. 

The dates on either side of that significant dash, those are irrelevant. What matters is the way the parents felt when their baby was born and who was present for their last words. And everything else in between.

The dates are just markers, one for the prelude to joy and the other the start of grief.

John stares at that dash and thinks about how little time he had with Mary, and how cruel it was.

Of their year of marriage she was sick for six months, and John stayed with her the entire time. 

He could remember one time, very clearly.

They had just met a couple of weeks ago and they were on their third date. Mary was charming, he could remember thinking. He liked her a lot. And there was no chance of Sherlock ruining their date, or at least so John thought.

They were walking down a random street, going to dinner and John saw a tall lanky man across the street.

“Sherlock-” he said, the name dying in his throat as he stopped walking, looking after the man.

“Sorry?” Mary had asked, turning around, but John was already across the street.

Mary followed after him, shouting his name, but that just back ground noise, there was nothing to hear, because that man _was_ Sherlock, there was no one else it could be.

The man turned a corner and disappeared. 

Mary caught up with him, panting slightly. “What was that about?”

“I thought I saw-” John turned back to her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to run off like that.”

“Who did you think you saw?” Mary said.

“My friend-” John swallowed. Because how could he explain it to her? He wasn’t just Sherlock’s friend. He was the one person that Sherlock allowed in. John was allowed to see the way his brain worked, he was invited to crime scenes, he was valued, he was insulted constantly with backhand compliments while everyone else got straight insults. John was the one who was allowed to see the real smile and the real laughter along with the crippling depression and the sad violin music.

Sherlock was not a friend, Sherlock was not his friend. Sherlock was The Friend. The Flatmate, The Consulting Detective, The Foremost Expert on Tobacco Ash. What ever he did he was the only one in the world.

But there was not way to explain this to Mary. 

“My friend, he passed away a year ago, it’s stupid, I know, but I keep thinking I see him.”

Mary looked at him curiously. Her face didn’t crumple into pity the way most people’s did when they heard that his best friend had died, she just laid an hand on his arm and said, “I know what you mean. Whenever I hear people talking about video games, I think it’s my brother. I can hardly walk through an electronic store.”

John looked at her gratefully. 

It had been right there, at that moment, when she had understood his pain and didn’t get upset at him running off that he knew he was going to marry her. He didn’t tell her that of course, he waited a couple of months. But he knew.

“It was just like him,” John says out loud to Mary’s grave. “He came back from the dead just to ruin our date.” Although, now that John thinks about it, it could have easily been Sherlock himself that day, avoiding him to save his life.

He falls silent, thinking for a moment, and then he says the only thing he can say. “I’m sorry.”

But what is he sorry for? Loving Sherlock more than her? Because he’s not sorry for that. He feels guilty about it, but he’s not sorry about it. 

He’s sorry for not feeling sorry, in the end. He’s sorry that he feels like a cheating husband and he’s sorry that he and Mary didn’t get more time when they should have had twenty more years. Enough years to allow him to love her more than Sherlock. In the end, time was against them.

John walks away from the grave, and he still marvels that there is no limp when he does it. It’s a couple rows over, the other grave, the one he knows much better. 

The one with the name Sherlock Holmes inscribed on it. John sits down for this one, on top of the grass, where no body lays underneath the soil.

“You gave me the worst moment of my life,” he tells the name on the headstone. “and you also gave me the best. I’m not sure if the best erases the worst, or makes it insignificant. But I don’t know if I can ever fully forgive you for making me watch that suicide.”

He stops talking, because his throat is hurting, making it hard to talk. His eyes are stinging, so that the name becomes blurred.

It’s ironic, John thinks, that he cried at the grave of the his friend who is not dead and does not cry at Mary’s.

He stands up abruptly, and walks away. Why this is so hard to figure out, John  cannot fathom. He should be happy that Sherlock is back and sad that Mary is dead. And he is, it’s just that those two emotions are so severely unbalanced. 

John presses a hand to his forehead. He just wants to go back to Baker street and have Lestrade barge in with a case.

He wants to go back to the beginning when he had the pleasure of getting to know Sherlock, and learning to deal with his moods. He wants to do that without the pain of two years later, he wants to do that without blood staining pavement outside of St. Bartholomew's Hospital. He wants to do it all over again without the crippling depression that came after it and composed the worst times of his life. He wants to do it without the pain, which is impossible and definitely not the point of life.

John straightens up as he walks, squaring his shoulders and walking with more purpose. He got through the last three years, he can certainly get through his best friend- the friend- coming back from the dead. 


	3. Chapter 3

“How is he doing?” Mycroft’s voice has always irritated Sherlock. (He sounds just like their father.)

There’s a creak on the steps, Sherlock notices it immediately, because he’s been waiting for it. John is back, and he’s listening at the door.

“It’s none of your business,” Sherlock says, with an accompanying violin screech. He holds the bow delicately in his hands, but he really wants to grip it tight with anger.

“So, not well.” Mycroft sounds amused, which angers Sherlock.

He has no right to laugh at the situation and no right to laugh at John’s pain. 

Sherlock longs to shoot him, he could probably get away with it too, if it weren’t for John listening at the door. (John would not like him shooting his brother, sentiment.)

“Get out,” Sherlock says, and he feels tired. He feels exhausted. Sherlock hasn’t felt this way since he was away from John, and he forgot to sleep for days at a time. But he slept just last night, for two hours and he shouldn’t feel tired at all.

_Is this the effect of emotion then?_   he thinks. _Is this why normal people sleep so much more?_

“If you need anything ...” Mycroft fades away as he starts to come towards the door.

“I only need you to stop visiting,” Sherlock says, and flashes his brother one of those large, fake smiles.

Mycroft frowns at him. 

John opens the door then, pretending like he just got in.

“Hullo Mycroft,” he says. (Sherlock has never understood why, exactly, John feels the need to be pleasant to Mycroft.)

“Hello, John,” Mycroft replies, and they chat for a moment about something that Sherlock doesn’t care about so he tunes them out automatically.

There’s mud on John’s shoes and he looks sad. The corners of his mouth turns down slightly, which happens only after a bad day. Sherlock knows that he visited Mary’s grave. He never understood the point of graves, it was just the place where the body was decomposing. (Or in his case, it’s where a headstone sat with no body under the ground.)

Mycroft walks out the door, and Sherlock relaxes imperceptibly. (Well, imperceptibly to John, Mycroft would have noticed it.)

Sherlock stands and walks over to the window, looking out at the grey clouds and placing his bow to his violin.

He drags the bow across the strings violently. John hardly pays attention to the screeches that are coming out of his flatmate’s instrument, he just sits down and pulls his laptop over.

The painful sounds that Sherlock is making somehow makes his brain jam, stuck on one thought which irritates him to no end, so he switches and starts playing Vivaldi. 

His thoughts space out and flow naturally through his mind then, and it calms him to have his brain working again.

He lets the bow drop at the end of the piece.

“Do you want me to fix it?” he asks abruptly, startling his flatmate.

John takes a moment to look up from his laptop and a moment longer to understand what he’s talking about. “The toaster?” John asks, and he looks impressed, so Sherlock must have done the right thing by saying that.

Sherlock nods.

“No, it’s fine.”

Sherlock flops onto the couch with a huff. (John seems to be in a better mood after his offer though. Surely that’s an improvement?)

Sherlock takes the opportunity to go through his mind palace,sorting out information that needs to be placed somewhere else and taking out the trash. He lingers in John’s room for a while though; it’s impeccably clean and all the information is stored away meticulously. 

He doesn’t even notice when he drops off to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I'm updating slowly, but, you know real life gets in the way and such. I'll try to do better though, cross my heart, don't hope to die, I would never stick a needle in my eye.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a little bit of a plot appears? What?

The crime scene is wonderfully fascinating, and Sherlock is grinning and bouncing around. He can tell by John’s frown that it’s not decent, but at this present moment he does not care enough.

Because this is brilliant. 

“What do you see?” Lestrade asks.

“Shut up,” Sherlock says. It’s too loud in here, there’s too many people talking and too many people thinking.

His brain is going overtime.

He presses his fingers against his lips, harder than necessary, so that he’s sure they’ve turned white, stealing whatever color he had on his face.

“Everyone, if you could quiet down,” John is saying. “We don’t want Sherlock’s brain to overload.”

Sherlock is not sure how John knows that is a even possibility right now, but he doesn’t have time to consider it.

“Well, we wouldn't want the freak to overload,” Sally mutters.

“Sally,” John says pleasantly, “don’t call him a freak when much worse names can be applied to you.”

It’s such a mild rebuke, but it send the entire room into silence, which is just what Sherlock needs.

The only sound is the pattering of rain on the roof, and then, suddenly, his brain releases, and he knows, without having think through the thought that the killer is the brother.

_How disappointing_ , his brain hisses.

“I had been hoping that this would be harder,” Sherlock sighs, pressing his mouth into a thin line. His hands are stuck into his pockets, making his arms bend out like awkward wings. “It had such potential.”

“Who was it?”

“The brother.”

Lestrade’s only response is, “What? How?”

Sherlock sighs, pointing out the obvious signs in the flat, really, how can they not see it? How do they miss these signs which are screaming into their faces?

Lestrade’s look of amazement is satisfactory, and Sherlock sweeps out of the room, motioning for John to follow him.

They step out onto the curb and John turns to coat of his collar up against the rain, squinting down the street as Sherlock raises his arm to summon a taxi.

Sherlock opens the door, allowing John to clamber in first, before sliding into the back seat with him.

“221 Baker street,” John tells the cabbie.

They ride in silence for several moments.

“Why did you say that to Sally?” Sherlock asks abruptly.

“What?” John turns his head towards him.

“If I had said it to her you would have told me it was rude.” Sherlock frowns, genuinely puzzled. “So why can you say it?”

John exhales slowly, turning back to look out the window. “I just don’t like it when she calls you a freak okay?” he says to his own reflection. “It makes me angry. Just because you’ve got a bloody brilliant brain.”

Sherlock’s mouth twitches upwards. John compliments always make him feel a little lighter. 

This is scientifically untrue, of course, one does not become lighter throughout the course of the day- at least not discernibly; and yet, still, Sherlock feels as though he has lost ten pounds that he has been carrying on his shoulders.

When they get back to 221B Baker street John pads into the kitchen to make tea-again. Sherlock scoops up his violin on the way to the window and stands there, plucking at the strings. 

The raindrops are making streaks on the window, racing down the pane of glass. 

The discordant notes that hang in the air give the day an unreal feeling. The teapot whistles, and John removes it from the stove.

There the sound of chinking and then John comes over, and hands a cup to Sherlock.

He ignores it, staring out the window still, thinking. John sighs dramatically and then goes to sit in his armchair. 

Sherlock turns around abruptly.

John has his feet and knees pressed against each other and is holding his teacup in both hands. He looks like an overgrown child.

“Why do you _care_?” Sherlock asks.

“Sorry?” John looks up with a pleasant expression on his face.

“About Sally calling me a freak,” Sherlock clarifies.

John frowns down into his drink. “I care because-” he pauses, then starts up again. “I care because you’re not a freak, Sherlock. Because if she, or anyone else took the time to know you then they’d know that you’re not a freak.”

“Then what am I, if not a freak?” Sherlock muses quietly as he turns back to the window.

“Just smart,” John says.

“Smart,” Sherlock scoffs. “How ordinary.”

John stands up, and Sherlock turns around, watching as he moved to the kitchen to put his empty cup there.

John turns back to him, hand on his hips, “Trust me, Sherlock, you’re anything but ordinary.”

Sherlock smirks.

John stands there for a moment, seeming like he wants to say something else, he’s opening his mouth, but he never gets a chance to say it, because Sherlock’s face has obtained a horrified look.

There is a red light dancing on John’s chest, right over his heart. 

From the angle the sniper must be on the rooftop across the street, Sherlock’s brain catalogues the information as fast as he can.

His muscles are frozen in shock, until that moment when they release explosively. 

“Wha-?” John is asking, in response to Sherlock’s expression. But he’s cut off because Sherlock has tackled him to the ground, landing on top of him.

His knees are on either side of John’s hips, and Sherlock is crouched on top of him, covering his chest with his own body. He is unaware when he became the selfless soldier that shields his friend.

“Sherlock?” John asks weakly, looking up at him.

“Sniper,” Sherlock hisses, “get behind the wall, now.”

He gets off of John, and starts to push him towards the kitchen, John stands up and scrambles forward.

Sherlock turns and slides the doors closed, hoping that the unclear glass will help them slightly.

But on the off chance...Sherlock quickly tucks his body between John and the doors, making his own body an extra shield.

“Out the door,” Sherlock says, motioning towards the landing that is connected to the kitchen through a rarely used sliding door that sticks rather a lot. 

John steps towards the door, trying to slide it, but it has chosen to be difficult, on today of all days.

There’s a _plink_ and then the sound of whistling wind and Sherlock feels a fire on his left side, below his heart. 

The sniper was trying to hit John, Sherlock notes with satisfaction. It is not necessarily a mortal wound for the taller man.

He sucks in a tight breath of pain. “Hurry John,” he says, moving forward to add his own muscle to the door, and finally, with a squelching noise, it opens and they tumble out onto the landing.

“Call Lestrade,” Sherlock says, placing a hand over his ribs. “And possibly an ambulance,” he staggers to the wall and places a hand on it, leaning heavily against the structure.

John’s arms are around him, easing him to the floor and laying him out on his back.

“I need an ambulance at 221B Baker street, Sherlock’s been hit by a sniper,” John’s voice is remarkably calm. “He was protecting me, I was the target.” A pause. “We didn’t get an ID.” Pause. “Thank you.” 

The phone snaps shut and the there is added pressure on Sherlock’s back. Had there been pressure before?

“John,” Sherlock whispers.

“I’m here, Sherlock,” the other man says back.

Sherlock’s eyes are open, so he can see the carpet, all of the dust and hair that has accumulated on the threads over the last couple of weeks, and John’s knee is intruding into his line of sight as well.

It is remarkable comforting, this minimalist view of their home.

“It’s going to be fine,” John says, soothingly.

“Of course ...” Sherlock mutters, and then drifts off into unconsciousness, which he welcomes with open arms.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A very short chapter, and yes, this is the last chapter of this installment, but there's going to be another, don't worry. So keep an eye out for that.

There’s lightening and thunder as John runs out onto the street towards the ambulance. His hand is on the railing of the gurney that Sherlock is stretched on, and the rain is pounding down on his head so that he’s soaked in seconds.

He’s worried that Sherlock will get a cold as he’s recovering, making it a couple miserable days at the flat after he gets out of the hospital.

The paramedics lift Sherlock up into the ambulance, and John hops up into the vehicle before they protest.

They protest afterwards, of course.

“Sir, you can’t be in the back of the ambulance.”

“He’s my husband,” John says, using Sherlock’s lie, and hoping it’s convincing enough to work. His voice cracks and he’s sure the look on his face is slightly frenzied so it works.

They don’t protest as they make their way to the hospital, holding Sherlock’s blood in his body with a pair of inadequate hands.

His heart stops once, and John pushes down on Sherlock’s chest, yelling at him that _HE WILL NOT BLOODY LEAVE HIM AGAIN._ And, _WOULD YOU PLEASE JUST WAKE UP ALREADY GODDAMNIT?_

The thunder claps once, and John’s angry that the weather would choose to be so cliche at a time like this. His best friend is dead- really dead this time, and the thunder is cheapening the moment.

John pushes down on Sherlock’s chest again, tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes.

Why does the idiot find _him_ , of all the people in the whole wide world, worth dying for twice?

John pushes down again, and Sherlock arches his back, sucking in air. 

“Thank God, oh God, oh God,” John says as he leans back, looking up at the ceiling of the van.

“John,” Sherlock says weakly.

“I’m here, I’m here, you’re going to be fine, it’s all fine,” he says.

The ambulance makes a sharp left.

Sherlock reaches up, his hand waving in the air, and John grabs it. He is probably gripping too hard and squashing Sherlock’s fingers together, but he can’t help it.

“Ow,” Sherlock says weakly, and John laughs a little bit.

“It hurts,” Sherlock says with a little boy quality to his face.

“I know, I know Sherlock, it’s going to be okay, we’ll get you all fixed up.” John’s talking to talk, to make sure that Sherlock knows that he is there, and that while he thinks John’s worth dying for, John sure as hell hopes he’s worth living for as well.

“Just hang on alright, Sherlock, just hang on.”

“Where would I go?” he asks. 

John bites his lip, definitely not thinking of the two minutes when Sherlock was legally dead.

The ambulance stops and the paramedics open the doors and pull Sherlock out. John lets go of his hand so that they can pull him into the hospital.

Quickly, John wipes the tears from his face before he follows, as he always does.


End file.
